Albania

There will be boycott of school classes and massive protests unless the government quits its plan to introduce Macedonian language as mandatory in primary schools, including schools in areas were Albanians are in majority, Albanian NGOs warned Thursday.

Macedonia’s junior government party, the ethnic Albanian Democratic Union for Integration, DUI set a deadline of December for its senior ethnic Macedonian partner to solve the ongoing “name” spat with neighboring Greece. In December the country hopes to get a date from the EU council to start EU accession talks, …

Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) agreement scrapping bilateral visa requirements entered into force on Sunday. The agreement will allow Albanians and Bosnians to visit each others countries for up to 90 days without having to apply for visas, Albania’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Albanian foreign ministry’s spokesman Ralf Gjoni …

Thousands of Kosovo Albanians welcomed Bill Clinton in Pristina on Sunday in a ceremony to inaugurate a statue of the former US President. Clinton, who first addressed the Kosovo parliament, joined thousands of his fans in the “Bill Clinton” boulevard.

President Boris Tadić says Belgrade will continue to insist on a resumption of talks on Kosovo and finding a compromise solution. This, the president told state broadcaster RTS late on Wednesday, regardless of the stand of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) stand on the issue of the legality of …

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton will arrive in Kosovo on Sunday, says Hashim Thaci. The Kosovo Albanian premier explained that Clinton will attend the unveiling of a statue of himself. The statue has been placed on a Priština boulevard that has also been named after the former American president.

The Hague Tribunal prosecution requested a partial retrial of Ramush Haradinaj. The prosecution claims that the initial trial, which resulted in the ethnic Albanian’s acquittal on charges of crimes in Kosovo in 1998, was not just.

Montenegrin Foreign Minister Milan Roćen stated that his country “does not have any open border issues with its neighbors”. Roćen was answering MP questions in parliament in Podgorica on Tuesday when he said that he had learned from the media about the ethnic Albanian protests near the town of Peć, …

The retrial of the former Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj is scheduled to begin Wednesday at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). After the original trial that ended in Aril 2008, Haradinaj was found not guilty on all 37 counts

Three Albanian political groups in southern Serbia have joined to form a united political party. The party, dubbed the Democratic Union of Albanians, DUA, was formed when a Bujanovac party with the same name, led by Mejdi Zeqiri, merged with Ramiz Zulfiu’s Citizens’ Group, from the town of Presevo, and …